£4.8m19 Apr 2021 12:18
https://twitter.com/Eskers1/status/1384081362907406345
This month has been historic for vaccines in many ways, one of which has been the commencement of the first human infection study for Covid-19, at Imperial College London in partnership with the UK Government Vaccine Task Force. Today, we hear the exciting news that Oxford University is also starting a Covid-19 human infection study. The Oxford team will be looking to investigate the immunity provided by previous Covid-19 infections, to learn more about the disease and how we can treat and prevent it.
Human infection studies, also known as human challenge trials, are studies that involve deliberately infecting volunteers with a pathogen in a safe and controlled environment to learn more about the disease or to test potential vaccines or treatments. We believe human infection studies have massive potential to help to tackle Covid-19, from enabling us to better understand the virus, to speeding up vaccine and treatment development. Wellcome has long championed and supported human infection studies and we are thrilled to work with the teams at Oxford, hVIVO and Boyd to utilise them for Covid-19.
Wellcome has committed over £4.8m to support the Oxford study, the first of our investments in Covid-19 human infection studies. We are also working with Boyd who are undertaking discussions with regulators and researchers working on Covid-19 human infection studies, including those at Imperial and Oxford, to understand the regulatory barriers to setting up human infection studies and how evidence and data from these studies could be used more effectively to inform vaccine development. We have also supported the development of the WHO ethics framework for Covid-19 human infection studies and a feasibility report (which essentially is a roadmap of considerations). All of this has been to ensure these studies are done as safely as possible
With so much potential it is brilliant to see the UK being a leader in utilising human infection studies to help end the pandemic. Alongside the Oxford study, the Vaccine Task Force in partnership with Imperial College and hVIVO are using human infection studies to aid their development of Covid-19 vaccines. Outside of the UK, the US government and researchers at the University of Leiden are preparing for Covid-19 human infection studies as well.
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